Kamikazi comes of age as she holds her first solo art exhibition

She paces up and down, occasionally speaking on phone. When she finally sits to talk to me, I notice the anxiety on her face as she nervously taps her feet on the floor. She does everything with a sense of urgency, like someone trying to beat a tight deadline. This is what Hortance Kamikazi is going through as she holds her first ever art exhibition which started on Friday. The strain of organising her first solo art exhibition is taking a toll on her. But the 19-year-old says she’s determined to make it because this “first” is going to provide her the perfect platform to move places as an artist. The one week solo exhibition started on July 17 and ends on 24th at Yego Arts Centre in Nyarutarama. One of Kamikazis paintings. She says her exhibition dubbed “My Renaissance” is a clarion call to the youth to search within themselves and provoke their passion and talent, discarding their fear in the process to help them rise up and fulfill their ambitions in life. “This is about rebirth, about knowing that you can fulfill all that you’ve ever dreamed of. Above all, it’s a call to my fellow youth to step out of their own shadows because each one of us has talent shining within,” she says. Kamikazi says that she has already chosen art as her profession and she’s not going to look back. But she also admits that getting into it was never going to be easy in the first place. “If I were to live my parent’s dream, I would now be training as a pilot or any other profession apart from art. But it was my intractable determination to do art that finally carried the day,” she adds. She says that she remembers vividly the first day she was supposed to report to school of Art in Nyundo and how her father advised her to come back and choose another profession. Kamikazi at her studio. The soft spoken youthful artist says: “It was my first time to step outside Kigali and the idyllic view of the countryside really enthralled me. I swore then that this would be the road I’d travel till the end.” Despite her parents’ reservations about her foray into art, she says she had been lucky since she had a role model in form of her elder sister who was also a talented artist on her own, and who encouraged her to pursue her dream. She has also done her apprenticeship in the shadows of professional and talented giants of art in Rwanda like veteran painter Pascal Busheijya and Antonio Mshimiyimana. “My art is about celebrating nature,” she continues, “I like to breathe life into inanimate objects through painting them and giving them a new lease of life, a new form of beauty. You can call me a naturalist if you want,” she adds. She continues to say that she draws her artistic inspiration from observing nature since both nature and life are mutually inclusive. “Art is life and everything in life inspires me. I always want to get a new insight out of everything I interact with. Art is also a circle and the whole idea of doing it really stirs my inner emotions,” Kamikazi says. Kamikazi advises strong, passionate and talented girls to step out and embrace art as a profession, saying the stereotype that art is exclusively for men doesn’t hold water any more. “It’s women who were traditionally involved in art and beauty, decorating their houses and painting their bodies to look attractive. There had never been any point of departure to that,” she observes. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Kamikazi comes of age as she holds her first solo art exhibition